Saturday, 10 November 2007

Mourning Norman

Woke up this morning to the news that Norman Mailer died this day, at 84. In 1959 I read Advertisements for Myself, one of a dozen books that opened up literary and world vistas for a small city boy in Eastern Ontario. (Couldn't find my abused copy this morning. I think one of my daughters has it, and that's a good thing.) Sure, Mailer was aggresive, sexist and a literary bully, but he also wrote a natural prose (read Armies of the Night), reported on the anti-war march on Washington and the 1968 political conventions, and had views on everything. Larger than life--the cliché is apt--I mourn his passing. [Simon Dardick, publisher]